No Girl Is an Island
by Daria234
Summary: AU, Claire has to go on the run to hide, and she ends up hiding on a tropical island with another mutant on the run, Scott Cyclops, Xover with X-Men. She finds ways to grow as a person though stuck in one place, and the two become like family. Gen.


He hated that dick with the horn-rimmed glasses. He had tried to abduct Scott twice in the old days. But now he claimed to be different, to want to help.

Scott doubted his sincerity. But he didn't have a lot of options, and he accepted the man's offer. Guard something precious, and Scott would get a new identity in another country. No imprisonment, no "experimentation" on him, nothing. Just freedom and one little responsibility.

Scott still didn't trust Bennet. But when he met Claire, he started to believe that Bennet had changed. It was weird, though, thinking that a man like him had a daughter. And Scott could tell how much he loved her - it was clear from the way he threatened him.

"You want your freedom? Then you HOLD UP your end of the bargain. Claire has the U.S. Government, the Company, and a multi-powered psychopath looking for her, all of them pretty damn obsessively. If you don't protect her, I will find you and throw you in a pit and get all my mutant friends to take turns finding new ways to torture you. And that'll be the warm-up before _I_ get my hands on you."

"Why me?" The man hardly knew Scott, so why trust him?

Bennet sighed. "No choice. I need someone with no traceable connection to her, and with a power that might actually hold off Sylar. And I know you've worked with young specials before, so I figure you're not a creep. Though if you are-"

"Slowly tortured to death, I got it," Scott said.

So Scott and Claire went off to some out-of-the-way island in the Pacific where they worked the infrequently approached tourist booth and mostly just sat around on the beach talking. Sometimes she would skip rocks on the water for him to use as target practice, and sometimes they would try fishing. Claire would practice holding her breath longer and longer, swimming deep with the nets, hardly ever drowning, and never getting the bends. The more she tried it, the more she enjoyed the pressure of ocean and she swam into the dark waters, seeing the world hidden beneath the surface, and growing less afraid each time.

And every time, Scott would wait patiently in their rickety little rowboat for her to decide to come up, every time realizing how glad he was that he wasn't hiding out alone, that he had someone who counted on him. Waiting for her to surface, unable to see where she was, he quickly had to admit how important it was for her to come back up out of the depths, back to him. He admired her determination, but was watchful -- he had to make sure that she would be rescued quickly if she stayed down too long and her drowned body floated up to him.

She didn't need rescuing exactly; she would wash to shore eventually and wake up somewhere, maybe on the island, maybe a thousand miles away if the tides were right. But with Scott there, she didn't have to worry about that. She could dive through the brightly colored corals and fish, gather their dinner, and come back up to Scott's smiling and relieved face.

But sometimes they were less adventurous. They would look at the night sky and tell stories about the stars. Scott would tell Claire what he knew about history and science, and Claire would indulge him with a poke and a tease about "Once a teacher, always a teacher."

Sometimes they would ponder what might happen in the future. And sometimes they would talk about the people they had lost. Nathan. Jean.

And Cyclops grew to realize that he wasn't just staying to keep up his end of the bargain. And it wasn't even that Claire really needed his protection - he was starting to see strength in her that Bennet perhaps couldn't. But he was also starting to see how even a man like Bennet would betray the Company for his daughter. And he even began to understand what a sacrifice Bennet had made - not just in protecting his daughter at the risk of himself - but in making the terrible choice to let Claire have a new family without Bennet.

It wasn't that they didn't have anyone any more. Somewhere, far away, living other lives, there were people they cared about. But those people were a lot safer without them around.

And it was clear: Scott and Claire indeed had found a new family, and even though it was still tenous, still uncertain, it was less crushing than their old ones. Less full of regrets and compromises and things you had to force out of your mind just to function.

It was new. Unscarred.

And it made Claire realize how much she needed someone who could take care of her but not decide what's best for her. Someone who would let her contribute something to their well-being rather than just tell her to sit at home.

And Scott realized how lonely he was. How absent from his own life he had been since Jean, and how firecely he had walled every other person out of his heart. And with his confidence in Claire's power, he finally realized how hard it was, how constantly tense and terrified he was that his visor might slip or his control might falter and then he would destroy someone just by looking at them. 'No wonder people thought he was uptight,' he thought to himself. 'I practically winced every time I looked at someone.' But with Claire, he wasn't terrified. He could look at her without the twinge of fear that someday his gaze might kill her. And he started to relax, and not worry about his eyes so much. And it turned out that he never even once blasted her by accident.

So now neither of them were lonely. And neither of them were trapped.

Claire had always wanted her father to look at her like an equal.

And Cyclops had always wanted a daughter.

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AN: Originally written for comment_fic on livejournal, prompt was Claire and Scott, island


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